


Protection Detail

by kittykatdennings94



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics), the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: Multi, just me being mad about the MCU depiction of sharon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:59:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8196868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittykatdennings94/pseuds/kittykatdennings94
Summary: Sharon Carter's perspective during the events of Winter Soldier, as told by an angry fan who hates the treatment of women by the writers of MCU films, even our beloved Saints the Russo Brothers.





	1. Chapter 1

The funny thing, at the end of the day, is that Sharon _knows_ , days before SHIELD fell, months after being assigned to monitor Captain America- she knows that she likes him.

She finally understands, after a childhood of stories at her Aunt Peggy’s knee, what it is that makes Steve Rogers so goddamn unique. The world is filled with heroes, overflowing with greatness and excellence and nobility- hell, even Tony Stark, asshole that he is, took her breath away when he carried a nuke on his shoulders (no metaphor there, no way) up, up, and away into a hole in the sky.

But _Steve,_ goddamnit, he’s special. Peggy is and was the epitome of a hero to Sharon, who grew up obsessed with her great-aunt’s career as a codebreaker and later, a special agent for the SSR. Peggy couldn’t always tell her much about her work, especially not the government secrets that led to her becoming the founder of SHIELD, but Sharon always _knew_ that her aunt was going to be remembered by history, and that gave her the chills more often than she’d care to admit.

Steve though- she only met him through assignment. Joining SHIELD was a difficult thing for Peggy Carter’s great-niece. Everyone, and that included her classmates, considered Sharon to be a pampered legacy recruit, someone whose scores and training were moot in comparison to the weight her last name carried.

Peggy knew different- never treated her specially, never gave her preference in front of her peers. She earned her stripes, worked harder than most to a position of modest esteem, and made a place for herself at SHIELD as a specialist agent of some note.

When Director Fury ordered her to report to his office via decrypted email, Sharon had to swallow down her fear and obey.

The conversation had been brief, she’d remembered afterward- but it had left its mark on her. Fury pulled no punches, as expected.

“You’re not SHIELD’s best agent, Carter.”

It takes a second for Sharon to reply, “No sir, I’m not.”

Fury quirks his eyebrow at her- the one above the eyepatch, she is ashamed to have noticed- and smiles.

“But you _are_ a Carter. That means something- that legacy is a lot to live up to, isn’t it?”

Sharon doesn’t have a response to that comment, or at least, not one that didn’t require a bottle of wine and some serious introspection, so she nods silently.

“You aren’t the best, Agent Carter, but you are a rare asset. This agency is named SHIELD, and it stands for something, but you and I both know your aunt named it after something else. You follow?”

The director widens his eye meaningfully, and Sharon nods again, wondering where he was going with his terrifying pep talk.

“Director Carter is perhaps the most important player to emerge from the wreckage of World War II. She was involved with every major political event to transpire on this planet up until the late 90s, and prevented a whole lot of disaster along the way. Her decisions have always been difficult to make, but the world has always been able to trust her motives. She wanted to build a shield to defend the Earth with, and that is what she has accomplished, in a way.”

Director Fury turns to his desk and lifts up a file, thick and creased with wrinkles and age.

“We’ve got to go old-fashioned on this, Agent Carter. You have a job to do, and you’re the best agent for it, considering the fact that your Aunt was the original agent on this mission.”

Sharon takes the proffered file and flips to the first page. An old picture flutters to the ground, and even before she leans down to pick it up, Sharon knows what- or rather who- she is assigned to protect.

A smaller, beaky-nosed Steve Rogers gazed off into the distance, and Sharon feels her heart tighten with anxiety at the weight of the file in her hands.

Swallowing, Sharon finds her voice again.

“I’m… on protection detail for Captain Rogers?”

“Something like that. It’s more like you’re gonna be covert back-up for Rogers. He’s been on semi-active duty for SHIELD in DC for a few months. I just want to make sure he’s safe, in a good head=space.”  


“All due respect, Director, but isn’t Captain America capable of keeping himself safe?”  


Fury looks at her blankly for a full 30 seconds before barking out a laugh and slapping his hand to his heart.

Sharon ignores the Director and began to read through the file. She hasn’t been to DC in a year, except to visit Peg for Christmas and Easter.

Captain Rogers hasn’t been doing anything exciting in terms of ops, just routine runs for SHIELD with the Black Widow and the Strike team, but something prickles in Sharon’s spine.

“You suspect something, Director. A threat of some kind?”

Director Fury smiles again, disconcertingly, and nods. “I’m glad I’m not the only paranoid spy in the room. My gut’s rarely wrong, Agent Carter. Your cover story’s in the file, you have an apartment on Rogers’ floor- you fly out at 0600 hours. Report at the Triskelion directly after you land- you’ll be given the required surveillance equipment there, as well as supplies to work remotely at an undisclosed office where you won’t encounter anyone from SHIELD.”

“I understand, sir. Just… how long is this protection detail for?”

Director Fury turns to look out his window and crosses his arms behind his back, parade rest.

“Hopefully, not long Agent Carter. But we’ll see.”

And that is how Sharon’s life flipped upside down, on a flight to Washington DC, a city that was really a giant museum of American history, a city where her aunt Peggy is quietly treated for Alzheimers, a city that now houses Captain America himself.

She doesn’t see him for weeks after moving in. The apartment is nicer than her own back in Queens, and the neighborhood is beautiful, but she’s anxious while moving in. Undercover ops are usually easy for her- she’s the kind of blond that looks like it came from a bottle but didn’t, with a forgettable pretty face.

It used to bother her, not being a dynamic beauty like Peg, but Sharon now knows that the face staring back at her in the mirror belongs to a different kind of Carter- not bold or outrageous like Peggy or Great-Uncle Michael, but quiet and resilient. Mom never talks about the sacrifices she had to make as the eldest child of the Director of SHIELD, but Sharon knows how much responsibility she shouldered for her younger siblings. Sharon’s like her great-aunt on the inside- she’s always fought back when she feels like injustice is being done- but she has her mother’s accepting smile, her kind almond-shaped eyes that she got from Grandpa Dan.

So Sharon knows the two sides of strength and courage intimately, and worships those women, and tries to emulate them in her personal and professional life. She isn’t a bombshell like Peggy or the Black Widow, so she blends _right in._ She can do things other agents can’t, like slip away unnoticed from a scene with little-to-no effort at all. Of course, Sharon had to undergo copious amounts of training like everyone else to specialize in her brand of invisibility, but she’s always known how to play people’s perception of her to her own advantage. The marks think she’s just a pretty blonde, probably a secretary or a pre-school teacher, and next they know she’s got them in a chokehold between her thighs and they’re telling her everything she wants to know.

It’s glorious, being competent.

That’s why, when she meets Steve Rogers for the first time on a chilly spring evening, Sharon is able to remain composed in the face of the man who changed the lives of everyone in her family, starting with Peggy herself.

She drops her groceries entirely on purpose that day, after a car backfires in the street. Sharon’s been to plenty of warzones, and is pretty accustomed to loud explosions, but she’d noticed a man walking a few yards behind her and didn’t want to blow her cover as a nurse who would have zero experience with detonations.

Of course, the man turns out to be Captain Rogers, and Sharon fails to notice this on her walk from the parking garage to the apartment building’s entrance. In depressingly wrinkle-free khakis and a tee shirt, Steve Rogers blends in quite well, but there’s no mistaking that crooked nose when he asks her if she’s alright.

Sharon smiles prettily, so her dimples show, and gestures at the puddle of soymilk and scattered frozen dinners at her feet.

“After a shift at the ER, you’d think I’d be more used to sudden noises.”

Sharon still remembers the slow smile that graced Steve’s face in that moment, as they both kneeled down on the sidewalk to collect her groceries.

Disregarding Sharon’s protests, Steve helps her and carries her groceries in his vast arms to her apartment, at which point she stops and thanks him.

“You’re a real gentleman, Mr….”

“Steve. My name is Steve.”

Sharon internally cringes- she knows how many pounds and ounces the man weighed when he was born, of course she knows his name is Steve- and externally grins again.

“Well, I feel terrible. You’ve got soy milk on your nice pressed khakis, Steve.”

She watches him glance at the damp stains on his pants and laughs as he shrugs it off.

“I’ve had way worse things stain my clothes, Miss. Anyways, I don’t wanna keep you after a shift at the ER. If you ever need anything, I’m just across the hall.”

He hands her the groceries, and doesn’t try to invite himself inside her apartment, for which she’s grateful and pleasantly surprised.

He leaves, and she closes the door, and sits down at her nondescript IKEA table.

Overall, the meeting is unremarkable and boring and mundane, too unexciting for even the most generic of rom-coms. But Sharon feels that prickle in her spine again, not of desire or nervousness, but awareness.

This is the man who changed the trajectory of World War II, who saved thousands of men from German POW camps, who believed in Peggy when no one else would.

Sharon, for the first time, fully understands the compliment Director Fury had paid her that day in his office when he assigned her to protect Captain America.

She could protect the first Avenger because she understood the real reasons why he mattered. It isn’t about the shield or the shiny costume, or the miraculous story of his survival on ice that makes Captain America important. It isn’t about the man who fought on the streets of New York against aliens that Sharon’s protecting- not at all.

It’s the man behind the flag that Sharon grew up hearing about- sometimes she’d hear it from Peg, sometimes she’d get a story during Howard’s infrequent visits to the family’s summer home in the Hamptons. The tiny kid from Brooklyn who jumped on a grenade, as Peggy had described him, was the first real superhero the modern world had ever known. The friend, the almost-lover, the man who knew- who knows, intimately, about not being enough to be considered a threat.

Sharon knows so much about not being as bombastic as Peggy, whose looks had held her back at the time- she knows what it is to be a disappointment, to be doubted countless times despite her best efforts. The file she keeps in a safe under her bed has copies of countless 4-F forms with a veritable shopping list of illnesses and conditions that prevented Steve Rogers from enlisting for the war.

Protecting that guy- the kid from the poorest neighborhood in 1940s Brooklyn- feels like the first really important thing she’s done since she’s joined SHIELD.

The next morning, she gets a call telling her to send a report to Director Fury about the encounter, and though Sharon knows she’s being watched as _she_ watches Rogers, it feels off.

Her report is immediately responded to with an encrypted email inquiring about Captain Rogers’ daily habits, whereabouts, and even whether or not he sleeps alone at night. With all the surveillance, Sharon expects SHIELD to already know the answers to their own questions, which means that her mission isn’t just protection detail- it’s intelligence.

She answers their questions to the best of her knowledge, and then leaves for “work” at the hospital in her brightest pair of scrubs- yellow with pink daisies, for the record. Steve is just returning from what has to be the world’s longest run (by now, Sharon knows that he leaves his place at 0530 every morning, and returns sweaty by 0730) and bids her hello as she pretends to rush down the stairs for her shift at the hospital.

She shows up at the nondescript office building SHIELD operates downtown and immediately gets to work. Most days there’s a stack of reports and files for her to organize while she monitors the tracking devices SHIELD has placed on Captain Rogers- his apartment, his motorcycle, and even one of his favored track jackets.

That morning is different, because there’s a file on her desk that’s suspiciously thin. Sharon grabs a cup of coffee before she opens the file. For a moment she doesn’t understand what she’s seeing, because it’s a picture of a familiar sight- Great-aunt Peggy in bed at the nursing home, propped up with pillows, partially obstructed from view by a man facing the bed.

Sharon realizes its Steve in a few seconds, but doesn’t understand why SHIELD finds the image significant in the least. Peggy had already started fading away when they de-frosted Captain America, but she’d wept at the news reports of his return to the world, clips of him fighting off Chitauri replaying on every channel.

There are other pictures in the file- one of Steve on a jog at the Washington Memorial park, another of him grabbing a burger at a chain restaurant. The images are innocuous but they also imply that other agents are following him, gathering intel and reporting back to SHIELD as though Rogers is a person of interest and not a national hero.

That irks Sharon. Not because it’s out and out suspicious, but because it’s well within SHIELD protocol to monitor its assets. Heaven knows, there are people who still suspect that Black Widow will defect to resurrect the Soviet Union any day now, but that kind of makes sense- Agent Romanoff is _legendary_ for her shadowy history, her whispered past.

Captain Rogers, though? His whole past is an open book, from his public birth records to his education to his training at Camp Lehigh in New Jersey. Sharon studied the man’s military strategy and tactical maneuvers while training to join SHIELD, so it’s not like much is left for the imagination when it comes to Captain America, the icon.

Why is SHIELD digging for more? What do they have to fear from the man who wears his country’s symbol on his chest when he fights?

A man who died for the whole world (a la Jesus) and then came back to life, just to save the world once again?

It doesn’t compute, and Sharon doesn’t much like that.

She gets through work without trouble that day, despite her uneasiness.

When she returns home that evening to the apartment, an Amazon package she never ordered sits on her welcome mat.

Sharon examines the package before lifting it, and determines that it isn’t an explosive. Tucking it into her arm, she waves at her other neighbor, Mabel, and goes inside. Taking a moment to be human, to strip off those stupid scrubs and put on regular yoga pants and a tank-top, Sharon ignores the package. Grabbing a beer from her fridge and ordering herself some Thai food for dinner is an exercise in self-control, because the prickle in her spine is screaming at her to open the package.

Finally, when the food is on its way, Sharon takes her favorite knife (Pegs gave it to her many Christmases ago) and slices through the packing tape.

Inside the package is a standard SHIELD A/V recording device, nestled amongst Styrofoam peanuts and plastic wrap. A note accompanies it, typed letters neatly spelling out, “Visit your great-aunt.”

Sharon feels the beer rise up in her throat and wipes her mouth instinctively.

 _This_ is what the picture meant- _this_ is what Fury wanted, not for her to protect Steve Rogers but to assess him, to determine where his loyalties lie.  
Why else would they ask her to betray her own blood’s privacy and trust?

Sharon knows how much Peggy cherishes Steve’s visits, even though she forgets them soon after they occur. To record them would be a violation of the highest order, towards her family and the legacy she’s shouldered for years now.

The knock at the door startles her, but Sharon calms herself down and grabs her wallet.

Opening the door, she expects to see the delivery man from the Thai place- not Steve, holding her food and smiling lopsidedly.

“The delivery guy came to my door instead of yours, first. Thought I’d bring it over.”

Sharon feels her stomach churn as she plasters the dimple-smile on her face and laughs beguilingly.

“Oh, god, did you pay him? You shouldn’t have, Steve!”

He shrugs, adorably (big shock, he’s a golden Labrador trapped in a man’s sculpted body), and hands her the bag.

“I wanted to buy you dinner, but then I realized I didn’t even know your name, Miss.”

 _Of course_ , of course Steve Rogers is a charming son of a bitch, nothing like the bumbling weirdo Peggy had told her about all these years.

“Oh gosh! How rude of me- I’m Kate! And I seriously cannot let you pay for this, Steve, it’s too much.”

He smiles, big and honest, and she’s about ready to let him in and set the table for two when his phone chirps. Sharon tries not to wince as she sees his SHIELD-issued mobile blinking with a text message, or when Steve groans after reading said message.

“I’m so sorry- I just got called into work, I can’t exactly ignore my boss, she’s a real pain- but I’d really like to see you, sometime.”

Sharon’s smile is smaller this time, but genuine when she replies, “Sure. I understand.”

Steve leaves, and Sharon’s alone with her drunken noodles and a tracking device on her dining table.

It doesn’t make any goddamned sense, but she knows someone who can explain it.

Directory Fury is coming into town in two days- perfect timing for her to pay a visit to her boss.

Except she can’t get to him on time, because it turns out he’s been in DC for weeks, and she’s being shut out of Project Insight which has been developing under the Triskelion for _months_ , and oh, yeah, Director Fury is busy getting _murdered_ by mythical Soviet Assassins that don’t seem to really exist.

Steve manages to ask her out for coffee the night Fury is shot, sweet and unsure of himself, more like the man Peggy told her so much about.

She deflects, as much as she doesn’t want to, and makes up some bullshit excuse about infectious diseases. The music playing in his apartment is annoyingly old, before her mother’s time, and the volume rises as she settles down for another night of ignoring the recording device while watching Project Runway.

Then the gunfire rings out, and Sharon has her firearm up and is running across the hall. She breaks down the door after three tries and there is Steve Rogers peering from behind the wall with his shield.

“Captain Rogers! Captain, I’m Agent 13 of Shield Special Service.” She sounds out of breath, and she is, because there’s something so very wrong in here-

“Kate?”

The shock is apparent on Steve’s face, and Sharon finally understands what Peggy meant when she advised her that the hardest part of her job wouldn’t be the guns or the gore or the espionage, but the lies she would have to tell her loved ones to keep them safe.

Sharon lowers her gun and strides into the room where Steve is still crouched, authoritative in body if not in mind. Steve doesn’t lower his shield, so she tries to explain.

“I’m assigned to protect you.”

“On whose order?”             

Sharon takes one more step-

And there lies Director Fury, unconscious, bleeding-

“His.”

Training kicks in, and Sharon kneels by Fury, takes his pulse, and pulls out her radio.

“Foxtrot is down, he’s unresponsive! I need EMTs!”

The air in the apartment feels hot and muggy and Sharon is just doing her job but her whole spine prickles when the voice on the radio asks, “Do we have a twenty on the shooter?”

Steve doesn’t even look back at her.

“Tell them I’m in pursuit”, he says, and then he takes a running leap out of his already broken window and breaks into another building.  
Sharon wants to gawp, but instead focuses on the sirens wailing and the bleeding man who she cannot understand, who she thought believed in her.

Maybe she’s just naïve. Just doing her job doesn’t necessarily make her role in this mess okay- and she knows it’s a mess.

The EMTs arrive in the apartment just as SHIELD Special Ops arrive, cordoning off the apartment. Sharon slips away back to her place, packs her bag with her clothes and guns and laptop, and then leaves, back to the Triskelion. She brings the tracking device and the Steve Rogers file with her, unsure of what to do with them.

Nothing makes sense anymore. When the news comes out a few hours later that Fury is dead, the prickle has taken permanent residence in Sharon’s spine, and she’s gotten dressed for a briefing with Alexander Pierce, Secretary of the World Security Council. It’s short, and to-the-point, and she knows he’s just killing time before he meets the big cheese- Captain America himself.

He walks her to his office door like a gentleman, leaving her with the platitude, “For whatever it’s worth, you did your best.”

She thanks him, and turns to see Captain America in full uniform striding down the hall towards the office.

Sharon tries civility. “Captain Rogers.”

Steve side-eyes her and responds, “Neighbor.”

Who could blame him? Who could blame her? Neither of them were in control of this situation- hell, they probably haven’t been in control for weeks now.

Sharon continues down the hall, and makes her way to a control room for something called Project Insight.

It was time to get to work.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things progress.

In the moment when Steve’s voice rings with truth over the Triskelion’s intercom, when Sharon realizes that her great-aunt’s organization had been tainted, when she realizes that Project Insight is a genocide in the making - Sharon figures out that she’s more like Peggy than she’s ever realized.

Sharon had asked Peg once, how she’d felt letting Captain America be the public’s hero while she was still an SSR agent fighting even after Steve’s crash into the Arctic. How she could possibly put everything aside, grief and heartbreak included, and just _fight_? And how did she allow history to paint her as the “love interest,” and not the ass-kicker who helped end World War II? Didn’t she want the credit?

She gets it as soon as Rumlow pulls out his gun and points it at the technician at the computer.  As soon as the tech says, “Captain’s orders,” Sharon understands exactly what it means to fight with Captain America- even if she isn’t physically by his side, she feels his presence. Peggy poured herself into SHIELD, and with it, it seems she’d built in a lot of Steve Rogers as well. She is suddenly _furious_ as all the dots connect- the spying, the photographs, the requests to visit Peggy. Hydra has been targeting Steve from the beginning, and she’s played right into their plans, right up to the tense meeting outside Alexander Pearce’s office.

(She hopes he doesn’t know whose great-niece she is. She wants to tell him that herself, after everything is done and the dust settles.)

Sharon doesn’t hesitate to point her gun to Rumlow’s head, and she’s unsurprised when every other agent in the room pulls out their arms as well. She feels something akin to awe as co-workers and colleagues turn into soldiers on opposing sides of the battle lines, and that feeling only subsides when Rumlow feints lowering his weapon only to slash her forearm. It’s enough to distract her, damnably, and his Neanderthal brain apparently knows enough about programming to override the canceled-launch sequence. Sharon’s first instinct is to follow Rumlow, to apprehend the traitor, but then she sees the computer techs hiding under their desks- they’re all unarmed (per regulation) and therefore defenseless, and according to Steve’s helpful voice-memo, there are hundreds of Hydra agents in the Triskelion at that very moment. She ignores her urge to be a big hero and settles upon being an Agent of SHIELD- Peggy’s SHIELD. Making eye-contact with the techie who refused to launch the helicarriers, Sharon quietly escorts most of the technicians to the hall, and informs them of the nearest exit. She’s about to run back into the heat of the firefight when she hears shouting coming from the bend of the hall. The technicians have already run off, following her instructions, but they’re not going to make it if these Hydra assholes reach them first. Sharon un-holsters her gun and checks her ammo, worrying for a moment before reminding herself that in the world of a SHIELD agent, _anything_ is a weapon.

\---

After what feels like hours, Sharon has fought her way to the main floor of the Triskelion. She is accompanied by two terrified custodians, three terrified interns who have just learned that they will kill to survive, and an agent with spinal-bifida who works in the basement-level research labs. Her arms ache from blocking punches and kicks, and her legs are barely carrying her, but all Sharon wants is to get everyone around her to safety.

Everyone jumps when the first helicarrier goes down- then the next, and then Sharon can see out the shattered glass of the windows that the final helicarrier is headed straight for the Triskelion, so she breaks out into a sprint and drags everyone else with her. One of the bigger interns pushes the agent in his wheelchair, and everything seems like it is about to fall apart, but then they are 5 yards away from the front entrance of the Triskelion, and then a quarter of a mile away, and then they are so far that they can see the Potomac lapping against the sandy shores of land, and finally, Sharon breathes.

People die, that day. Sharon killed a few of them- all Hydra, she hopes, but she can’t be sure.

This is the part of her that she realizes is entirely her own, that day- not Peggy, not her mom, not even the specter of Captain America, but Sharon- Sharon doesn’t feel anything except relief, adrenaline fading to shock, exhaustion- she is on the phone, dialing the first legit agency she can think of (the CIA) and then calling an ambulance for one of her interns whose arm is a tiny bit shredded from a fight with a Hydra accountant.

She can see the wreckage of each helicarrier, smoke black and acrid in her throat every time she takes a breath, and she is _fine._ Her world has just exploded, her career is literally up in flames (the Triskelion is smoldering), but Sharon can’t help but feel elated.

So what? SHIELD is gone- all levels of government are going to root out Hydra rats- but the agency is never going to die. SHIELD has always had a place, and after the Battle of New York, Sharon knows that she will always have a job in security- national, international, maybe even inter-planetary. She is _flexible_ , malleable like clay, and that is her strength. She can be anyone- and that is why-

after everything falls apart, Sharon finds herself.

No more peering over her shoulder for fear of favoritism. No more worrying about living up to Peg’s legacy.

She doesn’t have to go by Agent 13 anymore, she’s Agent Carter now. The CIA scouts her out two weeks into her vacation at her parents’ place in Richmond, Virginia. Her final SHIELD paycheck is deposited into her account the day she passes all her entrance exams for the CIA.

It’s stupid, in an _Eat, Pray, Love_ kind of way, but leaving SHIELD for the CIA feels like spreading her wings for the first time in almost a decade. She stays in DC for a few months, cleaning up the aftermath of SHIELD’s fall while coordinating with Peggy, who is coherent for hours at a time, long enough for Sharon to ask questions and receive expert advice.

The summer after SHIELD’s fall is bizarre, because Sharon knows that the agency is rebuilding (quietly) in the shadows, without government aid or support. Fury is gone with the wind, Maria Hill works for Stark, and every other vestige of the decades old organization is denounced. One rotten apple spoils the bunch, and it shocks Sharon when week after week, new national leaders and officials are revealed as Hydra. She isn’t surprised that Hydra remains strong, despite the serious blow of exposure.

Captain America’s sway is strong, but he can’t compete with the right-wing media that begins its spin campaign to rescue some of its more tragic political figures (Ann Coulter is Hydra! No one is surprised, everyone collectively tweets #DUH). In fact, he’s a ghost now- gone, and Sharon isn’t sure where he is except that it probably has something to do with his WWII buddy coming back from the dead to shoot people and fuck shit up.

She forgets about Steve, works hard, gets lots of brownie points at work, and eventually lands a cushy position at a CIA office in Germany. It’s not really cushy, just lots of extradition-work and arms trafficking, mundane work compared to spying on super soldiers. Everything is going well. She has a casual boyfriend named Hans who knows she works for the CIA (another thing SHIELD put a damper on, it being a secret agency and all), who likes her and probably loves her, and Sharon is okay either way. Peggy is moved from her care facility to a private residence, guarded 24/7. Sharon privately thinks her godson Tony Stark may have had something to do with the move, but she’s never met the man so she can’t be sure. In fact, the Avengers are kind of quiet for a bit, only emerging when a mission gets a little more explosive than they probably planned. Otherwise, all is quiet.

(Not really. Bad things happen all the time, but nothing world-ending.)

Almost 3 months after her move to Germany, almost 10 months after the fall of SHIELD, she sees Steve again. The CIA is called to a deserted munitions factory 20 miles outside Hamburg, where the Avengers have just caught some arms-traffickers. It should be old-hat, except the weapons are Chitauri, and the Avengers haven’t left by the time Sharon pulls up to the scene. She is business-like, as are her colleagues, but no one can ignore the sight of Thor sitting primly on a tree-trunk, neatly re-braiding his hair. She resolutely avoids looking for Steve or his shield, and almost succeeds in missing him, but Iron Man (damn him) approaches her, face-plate lowered. His lip is split, but Tony Stark is unmistakably magnetic.

“Share-bear! We’re practically family but we’ve never met!”

His voice is loud and obnoxious and Sharon suddenly comprehends why Tony had to be kept away from SHIELD as much as possible.

“Hey Tony. Nice to meet you too.”

He lures her into talking about life after SHIELD, and asks a dozen questions about her love life before finally inquiring as to Peggy’s health. It is then that Steve walks over from where he had been washing the blood off his shield.   
“Tony, you know Peg?” His deep voice always surprises her, and he’s so focused on his question that he doesn’t spare more than quick glance at her.

“She’s my godmother, Steve. Surely your old man memory can remember that- sorry Sharon, Peg can’t help her ailment.”

Sharon rolls her eyes, despite the irrational panic rising in her stomach at the sight of Captain America in his uniform, shield casually slung on his back like a knapsack.

Tony realizes his mild gaffe and runs away to find a protein bar, leaving Steve to finally pay attention to Sharon.

They stare at each other for a moment- Sharon’s hair is blonder now, her makeup a little more carefully applied given the public nature of her position.

Steve’s hair is cut differently, and his eyes seem sharper than they were in the hall of their ill-fated apartment building. He breaks the silence first.

 

“I wish you’d told me you were related to Peggy.”

“I was on mission, Captain Rogers.”

“Steve. It’s Steve.”

Sharon fights the panic more actively, now that Steve seems set on talking.

“Like I said, Steve. Fury had me on your protection detail- and it seems like maybe other people’s agendas got mixed in with his, but believe me- I did not know about SHIELD- any of it, not Project Insight, not Pearce-“

Steve cuts her off with his hand, closing his eyes and rubbing them.

“I know. I knew as soon as I found out who you really were- Agent 13, by the way? Terrible code-name.”

“Um Pot? Hello, this is kettle.” Sharon feels herself livening with the riposte, and there it is- that spark, that weird connection she’s always felt with this man she barely knows and yet has intimate knowledge of, thanks to her aunt.

Steve laughs, too. It’s warm and casual and she feels herself relax.

“No relation of Peggy’s could go Hydra- she’d know in a heartbeat, and she’d have you confessing it to her over a cup of tea.”

  
He asks, in greater detail, of Peggy’s health, which in truth isn’t great, just stable. His mouth turns down, not in a frown but a kind of grimace after hearing that, and Sharon wonders (not for the first time) how it must feel to be young and beautiful, and to love someone who is elderly and fragile.

Steve snaps her out of her reverie by asking for her number, just in case. She gives him her work _and_ personal number, and maybe that’s why she’s unsurprised when she gets a text that night, asking if she’d want to grab drinks at a local pub.

She waits a moment, thinking of Hans before typing out a carefully worded, “Sure.” The message hopefully conveys calm and collectedness, instead of mild anxiety and guilt. She and Hans are _casual,_ and this _isn’t_ a _date._

It’s drinks. With the man who her great-aunt might have married, the man who might have been her graying great-uncle if he hadn’t become a popsicle in the arctic.

She doesn’t trouble over her outfit too much, just jeans and a sweater to fight off the chill, with boots in case of a fight, which is pretty likely given Aunt Peggy’s stories about Steve Rogers in bars.

Sharon arrives 3 minutes after 8, and immediately sights Steve at the end of the bar, ball-cap pulled low over his brow. She confers with a bartender for a moment, finagling her way into a far more secluded booth before catching Steve’s eye. He follows her to the booth, and they both sit. The bartender brings them both whatever’s on tap (Sharon barely likes beer as it is, but doesn’t really want to order a cosmo on her not-date with Captain America).

And it isn’t a date, which she knows. He instead asks her questions about her childhood, about Peggy as a great-aunt, and more subtly, as a wife and mother. He asks about her training at SHIELD, her senior prom, her track and field career in high school. It’s sweet, except Sharon notices the way he won’t let her ask any questions about _him._

Is it because he thinks she already knows, from Peg? Or does he feel like she owes him the truth, given her deception in DC?

And that question leads her to ask the question hanging over both of them, in the haze of cigarette smoke and alcohol fumes.

“Did you like me better as an ER nurse? As Kate, in the pink scrubs?”

Steve knuckles his hands over his eyes (a tell, she thinks), and shakes his head.

“Not really. I liked the idea of it- normalcy. Someone who’s far away from the insanity of what I do, and still…”

“Kate was someone who knows what it’s like to save lives, right? To fight an unwinnable fight? I get that.”

She pops a peanut into her mouth and chews thoughtfully.

Steve rubs the back of his neck (it’s fucking adorable) and sighs.

“It’s okay. I’m used to not dating. I’m sure Peggy told you what a loser I was with the ladies back in the day.”

“Oh, Steve. You made Peggy love you, and that’s a feat for a truly extraordinary man. Do you know how many losers used to bother her even after she was happily married? They called her the nutcracker at PTA meetings- for obvious reasons.”

Steve laughs and she’s struck again by how warm it is.

“I still like you, Sharon. You’re Kate, and not, and maybe that’s better. You know my situation, probably better than most.”

The pause afterwards is pregnant, and Hans crosses Sharon’s mind again- sweet Hans with the funny jokes and lovely smile.

Steve smiles at her too, though, and she feels that weird connection flare up.

“I liked you too, for the record. Not just undercover. Don’t you think it’s weird, though? Considering I’m related to Peggy?”

Steve downs the rest of his beer and orders another round, and then answers.

“No, not really. Nothing about my life is logical or normal, Sharon. I’m a centenarian-to-be. Tony wants to throw me a century party, and is already planning a parade. Peggy wants me to move on, anyways. It’s kind of strange that maybe you’re the person I like, after all this time, but compared to everything else? I’m not that bothered by it.”

Sharon can’t argue with such logic, but feebly attempts to help him see it from her perspective.

“Maybe you just have a type.”

Steve smiles again, and this time it’s lopsided and Sharon wants to _flip the table_ because she’s about to text Hans that she doesn’t want to see him anymore, because she likes Steve too.

“Maybe I do. I never said I was a complicated man.”

Sharon laughs, then, and gently places her smaller hand atop his larger one. Steve raises his hand and rests it against her palm, and the size-difference is almost comical.

“You have weird shield callouses, Steve.”

Steve snorts into his beer, and points to one on Sharon’s palm. “You’ve got some significant callouses too. What kind of heat do you pack?”

(Sharon wonders uncharitably WHO taught Steve to say that, and also wonders if he gets the innuendo. Judging by the twinkle in his eyes, probably.)

They talk for a few more hours, eventually ordering sandwiches, and then they’re both standing in the parking lot.

“I took a cab here- do they have taxi services this late at night?”

Sharon doesn’t lie, but she does omit the truth. “I can give you a ride. Company car, debugged courtesy of yours truly.”

Steve accepts, and she internally chuckles as he sets his seat-warmers as high as they go.

The drive is quiet, but Sharon can hear Steve thinking something.

She pulls up to his hotel at half-past midnight. Steve unbuckles his seatbelt, but doesn’t move to exit the car.

His brow is shadowed by his cap and the darkness of the idling car, but Sharon can see the frown on Steve’s face.

“I’m in a bad place, right now. I have this friend… from before. Looking for him, while being an Avenger… it’s difficult. You might not get the attention you deserve from me.”

“Peg told me about Sergeant Barnes, Steve. I get it- you _have_ to find him. And I also know that relationships of any kind suck when you’re busy being an icon- I remember Uncle Daniel dealing with Peggy’s position in the public eye. There were times when things were close to falling apart in their marriage, but they respected each other enough to keep trying to improve.”

Steve smiles, softly, and turns to face her.

“You remind me of her. I know that’s weird because of history, but you just do. It’s nice… it makes me feel like everything isn’t so far away.”

Sharon doesn’t know what to say to that, so she takes Steve’s hand and presses a gentle kiss to his knuckles.

“Go sleep, Steve. Call me in a week- barring any alien invasions or explosions. We can talk about this then.”

He laughs, and then he’s gone, and her car feels cold, empty.

It takes Steve nine days to call her- first Sharon’s tied up testifying for some work hearing, and then Steve’s off Avenging somewhere in Cuba, which is complicated for Many Reasons.

She doesn’t mind, and is mildly pleased that her breakup with Hans wasn’t unwarranted when he does call. (He was too sweet, and it broke Sharon’s heart a little to see him take his aftershave and toothbrush out of her bathroom cabinet).

Steve talks for 3 hours and 29 minutes, during which time Sharon skims through dossiers and briefings, cooks some stir-fry, and waxes her legs. She’s actively listening and responding, but she has to occupy herself while Steve tells her about a kid he met who had a cast on his skull from a fracture, and how he had painted a Captain America shield on it per the kid’s request. The stories are beautiful, and make Sharon realize just how _good_ Steve actually is- not just as a soldier, but as a person. He asks her about her day, and she tells him- it’s a weirdly intimate thing to do on their first phone call, but Sharon’s willing to roll with weird after everything she’s been through.

Two more months pass. Steve calls her every weekend he can, and he talks for hours on end. Sharon talks too, but she knows the voice on the other end of the line is lonely. She’s made friends in Berlin, people she can trust- to a degree. When she’s frustrated, she can vent to girlfriends after work. When she’s tired, she can draw a bath and drink a glass of wine.

Steve seems to lack that- home, she supposes, he doesn’t have a permanent home. He has his teammates, but Sharon notices the way Steve skirts around discussing them except in the most passing terms. He would die for his team, but she doubts Steve would ever reveal all of his inner thoughts to Thor over the phone.

She learns about his childhood, which is an infinitely precious gift he gives her. He calls her on the anniversary of his mother’s passing, tells her that “Ma died of tuberculosis today,” and then he stops talking, leaving Sharon to fill the haunted spaces in his voice with a story about the first time she ever got drunk.

Their relationship deepens from phone call to phone call, and everything is going well, and then Sokovia falls from the sky.

Sharon has always kept an eye on Avenger activity, but this is a _massive_ cluster fuck, and she’s afraid to say that the Avengers (or at least two of them, based on her secret ex-SHIELD informant) are at fault. Steve doesn’t call that week, so Sharon texts him a picture of the sunset.

He doesn’t call next week either, but sends a picture of a puppy, and Sharon relaxes.

Things pick up again, but she knows Steve has a new project. The new Avengers facility in New York is the worst-kept secret in the intelligence community, but no one questions it. Sharon’s sure that Steve is building his team, but he never talks about his work. Instead he talks about movies, music, literature, and Sharon goes along with it because god knows, Steve Rogers deserves a respite from suffering.

It’s going okay again, and then it’s August on a Friday night and sweltering hot when she gets a text from Steve stating that he’s outside her building. Sharon is dressed in a toothpaste-stained t-shirt from high school and running shorts that she never wears to run in when her door buzzes. She flips off whatever deity is watching over her and opens the door, and suddenly he’s standing there, dressed in khakis that have seen better days.

“Hi.”

They’ve talked for hundreds of hours, it seems, but neither of them can think of anything to say, face to face. She offers him a beer and he sits down on her sofa to drink it. She tries not to stare, but she’s an agent who is trained to _observe_ , dammit. His jaw is covered with an unfamiliar beard, reddish-brown in contrast to his blond hair.

Finally, she abandons her awkwardness and sits next to him. His body is warm and present, but she knows that something is wrong because Steve’s eyes won’t focus anywhere in the room, and then she realizes.

“Is it Bucky?”

Steve’s shoulders hitch, and she kicks herself for using that name, but she presses on.

“Did you see him?”

He shakes his head, and looks like the Steve Rogers from the faded photograph, black and white and weakened.

Tentatively, Sharon places her left hand on Steve’s arm. He leans into her touch, so she goes all in and wraps him in a hug. He’s huge in her arms, but she feels him making himself smaller, shoulders hunched and arms clasping her tight.

Muffled, Steve speaks into the side of her neck where he’s squished his face.

“He keeps running. I know he remembers me but he keeps on running and I don’t know why!”

Ignoring the tickle of Steve’s beard, Sharon rubs his back soothingly, the way her mom used to after a nightmare.

Steve doesn’t cry, but he does shudder a bit in her arms with choked back emotion. Sharon doesn’t move, conscious of the momentous nature of the occasion.

Then, Captain America’s tummy grumbles, loudly and epically, and Sharon detangles herself from his arms and beelines for her fridge.

“I have fixings for sandwiches, or Chinese takeout. Take your pick.”

The abrupt change in pace seems to confuse Steve, but he _is_ hungry, so he replies sheepishly, “Both please.” Sharon makes him a plate, and grabs another beer. Steve eats quietly, while Sharon talks to him about her day. He listens and replies, but she knows he’s not really there.

It sucks, but she’s an adult who fights the unwinnable fights, and so she asks him the necessary question.

“Why are you here, Steve? Why now?”

And Steve just looks at her for a moment before he puts down the plate on her messy coffee table and smiles. “I never was any good at talking to women, Sharon.”

“Psshaw. You talk fine with me on the phone. But you could have come to see me anytime, or told me to visi-“

Steve kisses her, and its simple after that.

His breath tastes like leftover kung pao chicken and beer, but his neck smells like old-fashioned cologne, and Sharon knows that she’s about to have sex with a national icon.

(She feels god in this Chili’s tonight.)

Somehow they make it to Sharon’s bed, and he’s still kissing her, but she’s got a grip on his belt buckle and he’s working on her bra strap, and they’re both panting into each other’s mouths.

Sharon wants to go slow, this is technically only the third time they’ve ever been together in person, but she also wants to act on the feeling that’s rested low in her belly since she first met the man in DC.

They’re naked soon enough, and Steve’s beautiful body is turning a flushed red as Sharon rolls a condom onto Steve, and then they’re moving, unfamiliar with one another’s rhythm but horny enough that neither cares.

Steve comes first, and then he finishes Sharon off with his mouth, and Sharon feels like her skin is going to melt off from the heat coiling in her belly.

“Wow.”

“Wow.”

“Dork.”

“Beautiful.”

He falls asleep with his head on her breasts, and Sharon lies awake listening to him breathe.

Steve is a complicated man, but she can see right through him. He didn’t say that he was looking for a comfort-fuck, but that’s what has just transpired in her bed.

Sharon’s not sure that she particularly minds- she likes him a lot, and he likes her a lot. They’re two consenting adults, and it’s okay to not be in love and perfectly sorted out the first time you have better-than-average sex. She decides to roll with it, as usual, and see where things go.

She wakes up the next morning, and Steve is spooning her. It’s sweet, but she has to pee.

By the time she’s out of the bathroom, Steve is sitting up in her bed and looking guilty.

“Morning Steve.”

“I’m sorry.”

Sharon (who is still pretty naked at the moment) climbs back onto her bed, and leans against the headboard.

“What for?”

“I used you- I’ve never even taken you on a date before and I just jumped on you.”

Sharon starts to laugh because she’s actually in bed with Danny from _Full House_.

“Steve, honey. I wanted to sleep with you too- don’t feel bad because we took a non-traditional route to the sack. Hell, have you paid any attention? Your ex-girlfriend is my great-aunt. You’re like, 150 years old. It’s not normal at all, but I’m cool with it. Why shouldn’t we have sex, and talk on the phone when we want to?”

Steve doesn’t respond, but he does run his hands through his sleep/sex-mussed hair. Sharon decides to indulge herself (she’s been very good this year). She straddles Steve and runs a slow hand down his abdomen. The ridges and divots of his abs are impossibly defined, but his skin is soft and lightly matted with fur. Steve leans back and lets her touch him, a slow smile growing on his face, and a fast erection growing between his legs.

She appreciates his body some more, and mouths a kiss onto Steve’s clavicle before taking his hand and placing it between her legs.

Slowly, she begins to grind on his hand, and Steve’s pupils are blown wide as she grasps his erection and begins to stroke him. The rhythm of her hand doesn’t quite match her grinding, but she can tell that they’re both close. It’s loud and a little frantic for morning sex, but Sharon is learning to like watching Steve fall apart.

After, she gives Steve a pair of boxers (she’d bought them herself, no one needs a boyfriend for comfortable sleepwear) to wear around while his clothes washed.

Breakfast is toast with jam and bitter coffee, and then Sharon and Steve go back to bed and nap for a while. It’s strangely domestic, but she knows he has to leave soon.

It’s okay. After their nap, Steve showers and changes back into his now-clean khakis and plaid shirt. He kisses her again, long and searching, and Sharon can tell that he’s still upset- but better than before, and she’s happy about that.

He squares his shoulders before he goes, becoming a hero once again even as he takes the lift down to the ground floor. Sharon closes the door, and smiles.

Then she groans. “This is _so_ fucking weird.”

Is she dating her great-aunt’s ex-boyfriend?

She pushes away the thought and settles down with her laptop. She has work to do, Captain Boyfriend be damned.

**Author's Note:**

> will probably write part 2- it'll finish TWS and maybe address age of ultron as an interim


End file.
